In Cuomo’s New York, everyone’s being asked to sacrifice except the rich

By Liat Olenick

New York Daily News|

Apr 28, 2020 | 3:00 PM

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo provides a coronavirus update during a press conference in the Red Room at the State Capitol on Monday. (Mike Groll/Mike Groll/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo)

Gov. Cuomo just announced another round of $10 billion in cuts to public services in New York, including reductions in aid to public schools, health care and social services. This follows the similarly egregious cuts he imposed on Medicaid and public schools through the state budget process in early April.

Although Cuomo presents these cuts as a virtuous necessity in a time of crisis, they are in fact, entirely avoidable and should be reversed immediately by the Legislature.

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As a public school teacher, I know firsthand that these cuts will have dire consequences for public school students in New York City. Our students are already disproportionately bearing the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic. The vast majority of students come from the very same historically marginalized communities of color enduring the most death, income loss and instability because of the crisis. Now the governor proposes to dig the knife in further by making it that much harder for schools to support their students through this nightmare.

As a result of the ruling, the state was ordered to execute a $5.5 billion increase in basic operating aid to schools statewide over the course of a four-year phase-in from 2007 to 2011. Fourteen years after this ruling, schools have still not received all of this aid. Now, our already insufficiently funded schools will be even more strapped for cash.

The governor insists these cuts are needed because we’re in a fiscal crisis and tax revenue is decreasing. But he is conveniently ignoring the fact that New York’s ultra-rich are doing just fine.

New York is home to 112 billionaires and many more ultra-millionaires. Just this month, they got millions of dollars in tax breaks from the federal government, on top of the tax breaks they already received thanks to the 2017 Republican tax law. The governor had the option to minimally raise taxes on this select group of ultra-wealthy New Yorkers when he negotiated the budget in March.

But instead of taxing their second, or even third homes via a pied-a-terre tax, implementing a stock-transfer tax or passing an ultra-millionaires income tax, he chose to cut funding for Medicaid, public schools and social services.

If these cuts become permanent, when schools reopen, hundreds of thousands of students who need more academic and mental health support than ever will find that their schools no longer have social workers or counselors, that class sizes are dangerously large and that after-school programs are closed for business. Parent associations will also have a much harder time raising supplemental funds because of the deepening economic crisis caused by COVID and many, many more students will require urgent mental health and academic support as they recover from trauma and missed time in school.

As public schools grow even more decrepit because of Cuomo’s proposed cuts, the charter schools that Cuomo has allowed to expand in New York state with little oversight will be able to recruit more public school students, justifying even more charter school expansion and public school closures.

This is not the future I want, and it’s not the future my children deserve. In this moment of crisis, virtually all New Yorkers are being asked to make sacrifices for the sake of their neighbors during COVID-19, except the ultra-rich. In their undertaxed second homes, they watch their bank accounts overflow while the rest of the state cries out in pain.

It’s time to put our communities in need and our children first. Gov. Cuomo, tax the rich and reverse these egregious cuts to public schools.

Olenick is a public school teacher, MORE-UFT caucus member and co-president of Indivisible Nation BK.